After the Looking Glass
by everworld2662
Summary: [After the Looking Glass, after Wonderland, Alice grows but does not blossom.] [CCxAlice] [Don't likeDon't read]


After the Looking Glass

**Title: After the Looking Glass  
****Author: Ever1  
****Fandom: American McGee's Alice  
****Set: The timing is a little all over the place. Though ostensibly before the game, there are mentions of the Hatter's "betrayal" & so on, which technically she would not know about yet. Yes, this _is _intentional.  
****Genre: Angst/Romance  
****Length: One-off.  
****Rating: M  
****Pairing: Cheshire Cat/Alice  
****Warnings: Just look at the pairing, for god's sake. **

**A/N: This is the fun part, where I painstakingly explain what should be fucking obvious – if this is going to traumatize you? Yeah – don't read it. Don't read it and then flame. Just don't bloody read it to begin with, okay? Don't like/don't read. Simple as that, people. **

A/N 2: Yes, I'm aware a lot of people could potentially be disturbed by a CC/Alice pairing that _isn't _cleverly sidestepped by somehow magically making the Cat human so that it's basically all kosher. Well, yeah, that's not happening here. For very deliberate and precise reasons, I might add. I've read some good CC/Alice fics on here but only with the "human" Cheshire Cat. I get why, but it _is _possible to write that pairing without making it "mainstream" and obviously, without repulsing half the readers. As Alice puts it in this – "what matters is honesty – and she is not denying it, but resisting it". Now, please keep in mind that I'm not an idiot. I do know how to write tastefully about distasteful subjects, you know. I'm hardly going to write anything…shudder-worthy. No, it's merely a description of emotions, and so on, and so on. Utterly harmless. But you people are all so sensitive these days. (Don't mind my sarcasm)

**A/N 3: And for those who share the same mind frame/IQ as I … all I can say is enjoy the fic. & please, as always, review if you like it. Even if you don't (minus pairing issues, evidently). **

After the Looking Glass, after Wonderland; Alice grows but does not blossom.

Is it that difficult to understand? How it could have left her high and dry? Such a whirlwind…

Grow up, it was whispered. A family is all you can ever aspire to.

Alice isn't made for that, and she knows it. But all the while, meanings run away with her. She haunts the window of her bedroom all night, watching a mangy cat pace its way along a distant rooftop.

_Cheshire_, something in her mind mutters, and she is scornful – of _course _not…but there is something to its slink that makes her heart stop and her mouth go dry.

* * *

She has become a hat-collector. She is immersing herself in the Hatter's world in the hopes of finding him there, somewhere. After all he's betrayed himself, not her.  
She chokes down pills, and chokes out, "_Poisoner_! Poisoner!" And then, more subdued, "You're _nothing _but the Queen's Poisoner." 

Hah! Would that he had been that.

Instead, Alice takes particular enjoyment out of drinking tea these days. It is a twisted pleasure, because she is torturing herself as much as not, but she forces herself to drain the cup in intermittent, lengthy draughts and smile when she is done. She thinks of the Hatter the entire time. Time. Tea and time.

He would have made a riddle out of that.

* * *

The White Rabbit is someone who also shares a fixation with Time. He trips after her – or ahead of her, Alice isn't really sure which anymore - and cries, "_Please don't dawdle, Alice, we're very late indeed_!" 

So what can she call what she is doing here? Dawdling? Drinking tea as she burns…

Alice wakes up screaming.

"Cat! Cat, help me! I'm on fire, oh, _Cat_!"

She dreams of the others, it's true, but she dreams of Cat most often. His fur is both sleek and blood matted, and as she combs her fingers through it she's not sure if it's the softness of smooth skin or tufted fur that she is feeling. It is at this moment she thinks she sees the features of a boy overlay Cat's – but this, she knows _is _a hallucination. There is no happy ending here – no way of making this wrong any more right. The Cat is a Cat. There is no justification at all…in that direction lies _true _madness; so Alice can be content with the flickerings of mind so long as she can identify them as such.

This time she sleeps longer than usual. The usual dream extends into something far more painful. Cat curled in her arms, Alice can only look down and love, fiercely. She wishes thing were different – because than she could have more.

...More. More? She wonders what she means, but dimly supposes that it does not matter. What matters is honesty – and she is not denying it, but resisting it, and that, in retrospect, is all _anyone _can do. She wishes things were different – but she has no idea _how_, because the Cheshire Cat is a Cat, after all.

She cannot think of him as anything else, so how could she love him?

* * *

And suddenly, one evening…_clarity_. It's like a bubble popping; Alice takes a shuddering gasp of air that finally, finally seems to reach her lungs. 

"Oh, my dear Alice."

The Cheshire Cat grins at her, curled on her bed and Alice sits gingerly beside him on the excruciatingly white sheets. She feels real, but she also feel sick to her stomach.

"Cat," she says simply. "I have missed you."

"And I, you. I think you've no idea how much."

Alice holds her arms out to him, and languorously he climbs into her lap, curled against her stiff dress.

The Cheshire Cat she loves so much quietly offers to guide her into the midst of the bloodshed and just as quietly, Alice accepts.


End file.
